Keeping Up with the Joneses – Women’s and Men’s Style

These two samples are from a series begun in September 1915 based on the Keeping Up with the Joneses newspaper comic by “Pop” Momand. The films begin with “out of the inkwell” drawings of the sort seen in Winsor McCay films and later elaborated by Max Fleischer. Like other comic strips and animated films of the era, notably Bringing Up Father (published from 1912; filmed 1916-18), Keeping Up with the Joneses features a husband oppressed by a wifes obsession with high society and consumer fashion. The series ended abruptly in February 1916 after its animator, Harry S. Palmer, lost a patent infringement suit brought by John Randolph Bray over the use of transparent celluloid sheets.